


Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore"

by hazel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Ridiculous, goth!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-05
Updated: 2004-12-05
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazel/pseuds/hazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>this is a completely ridiculous story in which severus snape, wizard, decides to leave behind the wizarding world and live in 70s london with a bunch of goths. take that how you will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore"

**Author's Note:**

> i honestly can't remember if i ever actually posted this anywhere. i'm pretty confident it's complete though.
> 
> i can't remember if this was written post-goblet of fire or post-order of the phoenix, but at any rate it definitely predates half-blood prince and deathly hallows. as such, i was working on the assumption that severus was a pureblood.

There was a brief, embarrassing period in Severus Snape's life, just after the first Defeat of He Who Shall Not Be Named and before Albus Dumbledore had approached him with the position of Potions Professor at Hogwarts Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he'd fallen in with a group of odd Muggles who lived uncomfortably close to the wizarding quarter in London.

He'd met them the very first time he'd taken tentative steps out the front entrance of the Leaky Cauldron. If he'd given the matter any thought - and he hadn't, frankly, having never taken Muggle Studies at school himself, and not having the inclination or reason to learn Muggle customs afterwards - he would have realised that his dress might cause comment amongst the good people who populated Muggle London. However, it had been too late by the time he'd gotten two hundred yards the road, and he was too proud to retrace his steps, even though he did find the stares a little disconcerting.

But then he had approached a group of young persons wearing heavy velvet cloaks, and thinking they were perhaps other purebloods - possibly French or Bulgarian, taking their pale skin and uniformly dark hair into consideration - out for a Sunday stroll in London (a novelty in those days, when blood and family mattered) he had walked up to them and introduced himself, Severus Snape. 

"Severus," one of the taller men had murmured. "A lovely name, to sever." Perhaps at that point he should have taken stock of his surroundings a little more carefully - the building, while Victorian Gothic in style, was not at all the sort of dwelling in which proper young purebloods would congregate, and none of the group were wearing dragonhide or spidersilk lace. 

Alas, he had been distracted by the soft drawl of a pretty young thing encased in velvet, lace, and leather, who had looked him up and down carefully, smirked, and said, with a glint in one eye, "Nice boots."

*

The darkness of Severus Snape's cloak perfectly reflected the darkness of his soul. The problem was, though, that the Muggles, being unable to cast augeries like any decent wizard or witch, couldn't see that. They just thought he was surly.

For some reason, he didn't feel like informing them that he knew eleven ways to disembowel a child and four different methods of raising a vampiric chicken. Perhaps more surprisingly, this wasn't just because he thought they might not believe them. Severus didn't doubt that he could convince a group of already anguished Muggles of the existence of a clearly superior breed of humanity; neither did he doubt his ability to _Obliviate_ whoever proved difficult. 

It was something to do with their innocence, he thought. None of these children - and, despite them all being around his age, he still thought of them as significantly younger than him - had seen anyone die from a single curse; their biggest worries were whether their parents would support them while they wrote their thesis on microbiology, or mediaeval philosophy. They all subsisted in a state of perpetual darkness and gloom, but it was a gloom with a glimmering of _possibility_.

So he found himself venturing out of the Leaky Cauldron more and more often, and eventually found himself purchasing cowhide boots, of all things, on the advice of the prettiest Muggle he'd ever seen.

*

The Muggle had introduced himself as Blythe Ravensfield, and at first Severus had not realised that this was a pseudonym. He was somewhat above average height, although several inches shorter than Severus, and it wasn't until he'd gotten _really_ close that Severus had noticed that his dark locks seemed to be slightly lighter at the roots. Dismissing this as Muggle culture - something he was still unsure of - he had instead concentrated on the rather adoring looks Blythe had given him every time Severus had uttered what he considered to be a banality.

Severus thought it a fact of life that people died and that the loneliness of existence could only be stemmed by the inevitable oblivion of death, and wondered why Blythe and the other Muggles Severus had met seemed pleased and a little dreamy when he said such things. Nothing in the summertime teachings of his Grandmother Lestrange had ever given him reason to suppose that ghouls could be raised by an ouija board, so he had dismissed the suggestion of Nymph Dragonsdawn, a rather insipid-looking brunette, with a scoffing yawn and a lift of one eyebrow. By the end of the month, he found himself in the role of mentor to a group of twelve disaffected Muggle youth, all of whom had a trust fund and a prediliction for black.

The proof that they looked at him as a role-model came on a lonely Sunday afternoon, when Severus had, lacking anything better to do, suggested a game he’d learned as a schoolboy: Truth, Dare, or Fistfight. In fact, the game played at Hogwarts had been Truth, Dare, or Duel, but Severus was always conscious of his roots and thus substituted something that would not make the young Muggles look at him amiss. The suggestion had been an idle one: Severus had no real desire to learn anything particularly meaningful about his companions, and there were always other things one could be doing. He could go home and visit his Great-Aunt Beatrix, for instance, although she did suffer immensely from gout and was hence inclined to be irritable. 

When none of the others had spoken into what was suddenly an uncomfortable, rather than dazed, silence, Severus began to feel a trifle uncomfortable, and was moved to ask what the matter was. “It’th jutht, well, I haven’t been in a fight thince Third Form at thchool, you know,” Marcus Fox said rather hesitantly. “And, you know, I wath rather prone to lothing. The torment of my thoul was apparent to the bullieth even then, you thee.”

Severus was aware then of a sensation that felt as though it might be faintly construed – by someone who did not know him well, naturally – as sympathy. He, too, had spent many painful days healing from hexes and curses cast by Gryffindors and Slytherins alike. Later, in the service of the Dark Lord and Albus Dumbledore, he had developed a certain tolerance for most of the major hex families, and a few of the less harmful potions classes. It was this later experience that prompted him to speak. “All the more reason to learn to fight, then. One should never borrow trouble, but sometimes trouble borrows one, and a man is always prepared if he carries a six-inch blade in his boot.”

“Oh!” came a chorus of voices. The Muggles were staring at him intently, most of them with nothing more than an appreciation for his obvious knowledge in this field crossing their faces. Marcus had a faint curl of smile destroying the line of his upper lip, the kind of smile that comes when someone finally learns something that has the power to change their entire lives. Marcus, thought Severus, would have done well in Slytherin – except for the lisp and the spots, of course. 

Blythe, however, did not look upon Severus as just a mentor, a fact he made painfully clear one dawn, shortly after the others had scattered home to flatmates or parents. Severus was contemplating returning to the loving folds of Knockturn Alley and his beloved potions laboratory (occupying a full third of his second-storey flat) when Blythe, coming down from an experiment with hallucinogens, had sidled up to him and thrust his rather cold hand down Severus' trousers. "I'm bored," he'd whined.

Severus was shocked, certainly, and had never found cold skin the most arousing sensation in the world, but considered the opportunity for free sex to be better than trying yet again to create a decent wolfsbane (something that had been discussed in potions theory for the past three hundred years but never successfully produced). So he'd turned into Blythe's waiting arms and smirked. "And what do you expect me to do about that?"

Blythe had answered by thrusting his groin into Severus' thigh and attempting to claw himself high enough to bite Severus' collarbone. It was answer enough.

*

It wasn't that the sex was particularly good, or that Severus found Blythe particularly interesting. On the contrary, Severus had had better sex with a diseased hag named Magda, and Lucius Malfoy (who only thought of death, sex, magic, and shopping) was a better conversationalist than Blythe, who only thought of death, sex, and shopping. Nevertheless, Severus soon found himself spending most of his time in Muggle London, shopping at the markets on the weekends, and commisserating with Mordred Baker, a nineteen year old shop assistant new to London, about the high price of fine leather goods and the cost of maintaining a decent sort of establishment when all one really wanted to do was get high and buy records.

After much self-analysis - and _that_ wasn't something Severus was prone to doing, his willing escape from the Death Eaters due more to an overdeveloped sense of self-worth than any moral dilemma - he had concluded that his growing fascination with the lifestyles of the Muggles he had met was due to the relief he found in their presence. After acclimatising himself to that notion, a process which took some time, given that neither his upbringing or his disposition led him to think of Muggles as anything more than vermin, he had found himself asking why. The hangover he had suffered the next morning led him to avoid this train of thought for the next two months.

Eventually he concluded that it was the refreshing lack of prejudice which had led to him quitting his job at Mme. Burley-Thwaite-Fendleton's House of Herbs in Knockturn Alley in order to spend more time in the Victorian Gothic building the residents called The Crypt; he had never discovered why the building went by that name, since it was not situated anywhere near a cemetary and a few charms had proven that nobody had been murdered or been buried anywhere on the property. Certainly, the warlocks and hags who patronised Mme. B-T-F's shop were not typically the sort to sneer at the scion of one of England's oldest, darkest families, but - dammit, he could no longer purchase an ice at Florescue's without being made to suffer the scorn of some trumped-up mixed-blood from Yorkshire.

*

"Christ! Christ! Ohh, Christ! Ohhhhhh!" With a shudder, Blythe stopped thrusting into Severus, leaned forward, and kissed the back of Severus' neck. Severus, who had come some minutes previously, merely shifted his thighs a little and clenched his ass a trifle, an unspoken signal to Blythe that it was time for him to withdraw. One weary and the other sated, they drifted off to sleep.

Severus was not a good sleeper, and woke several times each night for various reasons. These ranged from being overheated to having nightmares, and Severus had found that sleeping in the same bed as Blythe had increased the occurrence of the former, but - mysteriously - caused a distinct decline in the latter. Perhaps Blythe provided some kind of calming influence, which the unconscious Severus clung to in times of need, or, more likely, Severus had trained himself out of having nightmares in the presence of others. The dormitory at school had been difficult enough without having to suffer the torment of a group of boys who had never been hexed unconscious by their parents.

That particular night, he had woken three times more than usual, and, as such, was particularly grouchy when Blythe shook him awake at eleven o'clock the next morning. "Hello there," Blythe whispered in his ear; an action which prompted Severus to screw his eyes closed tightly for a moment before sighing and sitting up. 

"Good morning, Blythe," Severus replied. Morning grumpiness was not a good enough reason to be impolite, after all. 

Strangely, this appellation seemed to cause Blythe to shudder slightly. "Actually, Sev," he started, shortening Severus' name in a way he _particularly_ despised but had not the courage, or, indeed, the real desire, to correct, "I've been meaning to talk to you about that." Severus _hmmmed_ in a suitably encouraging manner. "Actually, you see, and this is a bit embarrasing, really, my name isn't really Blythe Ravensfield."

Slightly stunned and a little wary, since, in his experience, no good ever came of people using false names, Severus sat up straighter and raised his left eyebrow. "It's Charles - Charlie - Bridgeway. Um. The Third." 

Severus coughed. "Your name is Charles?" he asked, disbelievingly. Blythe - Charlie - nodded, blushing. "You mean to tell me that your parents gave you the name of Charles, and you willingly gave it up to be burdened with Blythe Ravensfield instead?" At this point in the conversation, Severus considered himself to be doing extraordinarily well, having neither outed himself as a wizard nor choked Blythe - or whomever was in his bed - to death using a method he had been taught by his Great-Uncle Salazar after his disasterous Fifth Year. 

The man gave a slight cry of disgust. "As if you're any better! Severus Snape, indeed. If that's your real name I'll eat my hat! I just thought, seeing as we've been sleeping together for the past three months, we should get some of the formalities out of the way. Clearly, I was mistaken."

It looked as though the man - Charlie - was really about to get out of bed and storm off naked into the wilderness of London, and something prompted Severus to stop him. "You were not. My name is Severus Salazar Augustus John Snape, and I have the papers to prove it!" Years later, Severus could never understand exactly what had made him act, and was prone, when he did actually think about it, to blaming it on madness brought on by the full moon that had been shining through the window particularly brightly the prior night. 

Charlie turned around. "Really?"

Severus sighed, regretting already his thoughtless continuation of what was proving to be a blight on his very existence. "Really."

*

After that night, Charlie seemed to believe that Severus considered their relationship to be both committed and exclusive. He was mistaken in this belief, but Severus did not correct him. He would sleep with whomever he wanted to and deal with the consequences if and when they arrived; he did not think that burdening Charlie with an account of the joys of polyamory was necessary, especially when Charlie seemed to hold on so dearly to the ideal of monogamy. Something about his upper-middle class upbringing, Severus supposed. 

“Let’s go to a show,” Charlie announced one Sunday evening, just as Severus had settled down with the crossword puzzles. “They’ve just started showing a new play by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and he’s always fun.”

Severus ignored his babbling and continued to read his paper, until Charlie, mumbling something under his breath about the agony of silence, took it away from him. “What?” he demanded. 

“I said,” Charlie repeated, “Let’s go to a show. It’ll be fun – I can get the tickets from my Aunt Emily Jean when I go to lunch with her on Tuesday, and we can go on Friday night. We never go out, Severus.”

Severus blinked. “Quite,” he replied. 

“Oh, good,” Charlie said. “It’d be best if we, y’know, dressed properly for once, though. And, y’know, we’d better not _do_ anything in public – there’s always people watching for that sort of thing.” Severus did understand what Charlie was referring to and, indeed, in no way intended to ever introduce a male Muggle to his living relatives as a life-partner or even a common shag. Despite this, though, he was a little affronted. 

“Am I not good enough for your _precious_ family, then? Do I not conform to your bourgeois standards of being? I, a Sn….” But there he had to remind himself that Charlie knew nothing of the Snapes, or dark magic, or magic at all, and that these three things were, in fact, the things Severus liked about Charlie most of all. 

His speech clearly affected Charlie. “Oh, Severus!” he soothed. “Of course you are! My family’s just… old fashioned, you must understand. None of them understand anything about me! My pain, you know, growing up _in that house_ , it was so painful.”

Severus gave himself up to be mollified, sensing that nothing good could come of fighting with Charlie on this matter. 

*

The tie choked, the trousers fit badly and were insufficiently lined, and the suit jacket had padding, of all things, in the shoulders. In fact, thought Severus, slightly hysterically, if he were to accidentally meet one of his old… associates in the streets, they’d piss themselves laughing _before_ they killed him. 

“Oh, _Sev_ ,” Charlie drooled. “You look superb. It’s almost enough to make me repress the eternal darkness of my soul.”

“Stop blabbering on about nothing,” Severus retorted. “I feel like a…” _houseelf in particularly ugly livery_ “fool.” Looking in the mirror – and, really, who could fault him for a little vanity – he was disturbed to find that the pallor of his skin accentuated the darkness of his ebony hair, and that the pinstriped suit made him look even lankier than usual. _This_ was why he normally wore robes: robes hide all manner of sins, and swirl round the ankles in a fetching manner besides. “Remind me again of exactly what torture I shall be forced to suffer for your continued presence in my life?”

“ _Cats_ ,” Charlie sighed. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times.”

“And what,” Severus asked, tugging on his tie, “is this… _Cats_ about?”

“It’s based on poetry,” Charlie replied, and refused to be drawn any further. 

*

Severus would forever slightly regret scrying the tea-leaves left at the bottom of his teacup one morning. If he had been at home, this sort of thing wouldn’t have happened in the first place: his house elf, Bedwyn – Snapes called their house elves by their _full_ names, thank you very much – would have ensured that his Earl Grey was properly strained and made perfectly to his tastes. Even if it had, though, it would have not mattered in the slightest: he lived alone and, in the unlikely event that he would be facing someone else over the breakfast table, that person would have been a witch or wizard, and, consequentially, not the sort of person to be in the least disturbed by a little bit of divination. 

Severus had never had much luck with divination in the first place. Three years of lessons at school had only served to create in him a distinct distaste for the subject, with its imprecise babble and lack of proper note-keeping. His Grandmother Lestrange, however, had been quite the Seer, in her day, and had taught him a few tricks of the trade during his summer holidays. That was, until she’d died; as a ghost, she’d refused point blank to help him with any of his homework, let alone teach him anything new. Regardless, he had little talent for the subject, and so, when he did notice a shifting pattern in the still dregs of his tea, he – purely out of the noblest of academic intentions – thought nothing of peering closer. 

This, on its own, was indeed strange behaviour for a man known to dislike mornings, but was not nearly enough to cause any great stir. What _did_ cause a stir, however, and very nearly ended in Severus having to call the Aurors in to _Obliviate_ the unfortunate muggles who had the misfortune to be with him that morning, was when he started to speak. Worse, the voice in which he spoke was so unlike his own that Ophelia Lemming, a pale-skinned red-haired girl with a nasal voice and far too little flesh on her bones, fainted dead away. _“Gone! Gone is the wolf, for the dark-haired one slumbers behind the stones. Fickle creatures, all! Fickle! May the snake have the happiness, for the circle will never hold true. There can be only one!”_

Unfortunately, Severus, having never suffered a fit of Foresight before, had no idea what had just happened to him. He blinked twice at the unmoving dregs of tea in his cup and looked up, only to find a range of faces staring at him silently. “What?” he asked impatiently, his voice roughened for some reason he couldn’t remember. 

The silence dragged on until finally Ophelia, by now revived by the quick-thinking actions of Nymph, who had an aging and rather hypochondriac Great-Aunt, shrieked, “You saw something in your tea-cup! Oh my god, I’ve never met a real life psychic before!”

Luckily, three years in the dual service of the Dark Lord and Albus Dumbledore had developed in Severus a great talent for quick-thinking. “My dear girl,” he drawled, “You did not honestly think that was a real prophecy, did you? I would think that someone with your fondness for the macabre would understand that the supernatural is nothing more chicanery.”

Blushing, Ophelia stormed off into the bowels of the house, and, satisfied, Severus considered the moment over. He wished that he had not needed to lie about events, especially considering that all the facts he had pointed to him actually having experienced a moment of true Foresight, but strange happenings called for rather rough-and-ready solutions, and Severus thought he had done a reasonable job. 

He spent the rest of the day wishing that he had been in the presence of wizards that morning, people who would not have thought it strange that he wanted very much to know what he had said. The fact that he didn’t know pointed towards him having told a real prophecy; the fact that he had told everyone that he’d made the whole thing up meant that he couldn’t very well ask what that prophecy was. It was a dilemma, but Severus did realise that most prophecies were useless anyway, and thought that the likelihood that his prophecy – if, indeed, that was what it was – was useful at any real level was very small.

Later that night, he regretted his wish. Charlie Bridgeway was not a wizard in any sense of the world, and wouldn’t recognise magic if it bit him firmly on the ass – something Severus was loath to try, even though he’d heard it could be pleasant – but he had, in some unaccountable way, learnt to read Severus, and he knew something was wrong. “What was all that about this morning, Sev?” he asked curiously, just as Severus had tucked his pillow firmly between his head and shoulder and closed his eyes.

The damned thing was that Charlie knew that Severus could not possibly be asleep, and Severus was thus required to answer the question. Naturally, at first he tried a lie, but that was rejected so quickly and in such certain terms that Severus was moved to answer honestly for once. “I’m not sure, Charles,” he responded, hoping that an admission of ignorance from himself, rare as they were, would cause his lover (and _how_ he disliked the term, but nothing else seemed to fit) to drop the subject. 

His hopes were shortly dashed. “Because you were raving on about snakes and wolves and circles,” Charlie continued. “It was really odd of you.”

“I cannot help that you are constantly surprised by the world, Charles,” Severus responded, in some exasperation. “However… wait. Did you say _snakes_?”

Charlie sat up in their bed, blankets pooling about his waist. He seemed to find Severus’ answer puzzling, which Severus could well understand, given that he had just admitted to actual ignorance. “Severus?” Charlie asked hesitantly. “You really don’t know what you said?”

Severus sighed. “No, I really don’t. If you don’t mind, would you please tell me?”

“I don’t see why I should,” Charlie huffed. “I mean, you never tell me anything anyway, and then you just expect me to tell you things, and it’s not… bloody hell, you’re hurting me, you bastard.” And, indeed, Severus was, having applied a certain method of bone-crunching taught to him by his Great-Uncle Thomas Estevez (twice removed) to Charlie’s wrist. 

“Tell me what I said,” Severus demanded.

Charlie gulped, and then spat out, “I can have you arrested. I’ll scream, I will!”

“Don’t,” Severus warned. “I need to know just what happened this morning, and if you don’t tell me, you’ll be dead before anyone comes upstairs to investigate.” Severus was correct in this matter, having had the foresight to place strong Silencing charms – one type of wandwork he _was_ good at – around the room. 

“You said that the wolf had gone off because someone was behind a stone, and that there was a happy snake because the circle was broken, and that there could be only one. Why in God’s name is this so important?” Charlie whined, having seen something – truth, perhaps – in Severus’ face that prompted him to do as he was told. 

“It just is,” said Severus, and – letting go of Charlie’s wrist - took his wand out of his top bedside dresser drawer. “Now, I hope to Merlin I’ve got this right. _Obliviate!_ ” Privately, he winced, knowing that the information that Charlie had just given him was all but useless, and that without recourse to Veritaserum or invasive Dark magic of the type he had sworn to give up, given that the penalties were so harsh, it was impossible to get a better answer. The whole conversation had therefore been worthless.

A supreme look of stupidity crossed Charlie’s face, and he slumped over the covers. After a moment or two, though, he sat up. “What were we talking about?” Severus let out a barely audible sigh of relief. 

*

After that night, Severus could never look upon the Muggles with any sort of benevolence again. He relearnt the lessons that had drawn him to the Dark Lord in the first place: that Muggles were ignorant creatures, unfit for company; that they were weak and easily tamed; and, most importantly, that they could never understand him in any meaningful sense. Muggles got what they deserved – if they were not so magically ignorant he would never have had to _Obliviate_ his lover. 

His time at the Crypt no longer calmed him; the absence of his wand in his forearm holster, once so thrilling, was no longer a relief. Severus was a wizard, and despite his best wishes, and perhaps his best interests, he could not deny this. The Muggle world was closed to him because he belonged elsewhere, and it was time for him to put aside the fantasies of youth, grit his teeth, and ask Mme. B-F-T for his old job at the herbalists back.

The proof of this was in the way Charlie had managed to convince himself, by the next morning, that nothing had happened. Severus had, of course, a number of means of spying on the other occupants of the Crypt; he had reasoned, in the beginning of his time in Muggle London, that anything could happen, and that his old associates could come crawling out of the Leaky Cauldron to hunt him down at any time. Therefore, it was important that he knew what was going on in the building at all times. Even months later, the old paranoias still resonated now and then, and so he never bothered to remove his little devices. 

“What do you think of yesterday morning, Blythe? Did you ask Severus what _really_ happened?” Nymph asked Charlie the moment the two of them were alone in the kitchen.

“What?” Charlie murmured indistinctly through a mouthful of scrambled eggs. 

“Yesterday morning? The thing about the snakes? What was that?”

Charlie shrugged, and Severus’ concentration broke for a moment while he considered just how very attractive to him Charlie had become. “I dunno, really,” Charlie said vaguely, and Nymph, perhaps assuming that Charlie was, for whatever reason, lying for his lover, left the matter alone. 

Unfortunately, Charlie’s attractiveness was centered upon his ignorance, and – worse still – Severus was not an ignorant wizard. 

*

The end, when it came, was swift. Severus shrunk all his belongings into his single, ratty suitcase, swiftly destroyed all his spying devices, and strode in something approaching arrogance down the main staircase of the Crypt. “But where are you going?” shrieked Charlie, standing at the top of the stairs behind him. 

“Home,” Severus said, and he did not look back. 

Albus Dumbledore, his old warlord, therefore appeared in the light of a saviour when, a week later, he asked – ordered – Severus to apply for the recently-vacated post of Potions Professor at his old school. Severus did not like children and had not enjoyed Hogwarts, but realised that teaching was better than his alternatives. After all, how bad could it possibly be, compared to the trials of dealing with people who didn’t know what a wand was really for?


End file.
